Slash/Links Installation:

Requirements
Installation Procedure (Short version)
Installation Procedure (Verbose version)
Upgrading

Requirements:
-UNIX/Linux based web host
-A Ruby on Rails installation on your host’s machine
-Shell access to your web host (This should change to FTP only in the near future)

Installation Procedure (the simple version):
1. Download the source here
2. Upload the file to your host machine and unzip somewhere outside of your web space.
3. SSH into your web host and make a symbolic link from the slashlinks/public directory to a directory in your web accessible space. (ex: ln –s /full/path/to/slashlinks/public /full/path/to/www.example.com/links -- try using 'pwd' to get the full paths)
4. Login (www.example.com/links/login) and then click Import.
5. You’ve got Links!

Installation Procedure (the wordy version of the same thing):
There is more than one way to get SlashLinks installed on your host’s machine, but I’ll start with what I feel is the easiest technique. First, download the zipped or gzipped Rails directory structure from here. Once you have this file you need to upload it to your root directory on your host server via FTP. Next you’ll need to access a shell on your host’s machine (i.e. log in via SSH). When you log in you should find the file FILENAME in the base directory of your user’s account. You’ll need to next unzip the file to create the Rails directory structure for Slash/Links. Do this with the following command:

tar -xvzf slashlinks_0.3.tar.gz

This will create a new directory called slashlinks where the code will live. By default, SlashLinks will use a SQLite3 database file that already exists for storing the local copy of your bookmarks. All you have to do now is make a symbolic link (i.e. point the slashlinks application to a directory visible on the web) from the slashlinks/public directory to the directory that you want represented in your URL. For example, if I want my links to live in www.example.com/links, I would do the following:

ln –s /full/path/to/slashlinks/public /full/path/to/www.example.com/links

This will create the symbolic link directory called link in your web-accessible space www.example.com and point it to the public directory in slashlinks, which should live outside of your web-accessible space for security purposes.

Now you can go to www.example.com/links/login to access your new site. You’ll be prompted for a username and password which need to be the same as your del.icio.us username and password. Once the login is verified, SlashLinks will require this login/password combo to access the configuration portion of the application in the future.

After you have logged in you will arrive at the configuration menu for SlashLinks. The first thing we need to do is import all of your links from del.icio.us to your host’s machine. Just click import to do this (If you have issues on import, check the FAQ). This can take some time, so be patient. You should eventually see a count down in the number of links left to import, but the speed at which this happens is very machine dependent.

That’s it! Now you’ve got SlashLinks installed and running. You can modify the number of links displayed per page and the time interval at which the system will check del.icio.us for new links (don’t enter zero though, that’ll probably piss off del.icio.us) before you leave if you like. You can now access the core new functionalities of your site at the following URLs:

www.example.com/link/
-analog to your del.icio.us user page – just a list of links reverse chronological style)
www.example.com/tags/
-your tag cloud
www.example.com/archive/
-an archive of links you posted to del.icio.us and the day you posted them

And of course you can modify the display of these pages through the templates to have the design fit with your existing website.

Upgrading your SlashLinks version
To upgrade SlashLinks, I recommend you unzip the tar file to a directory different from the one you have SlashLinks installed in currently. Now move your templates from your old install (the ones in slashlinks/app/views/link) to the equivalent in the temporary install directory (I added one line to _links.rhtml at the top to play mp3s with javascript, so you may not want to overwrite that one, but it won't hurt if you do). Also, copy your old SlashLink's stylesheet (frontend.css) over from slashlinks/public/stylesheets into the same place in the new install. Finally, if you are using SQLite (which is the default), copy your old slashlinks_prd.db file from slashlinks/db/ to the same directory in the new install. These three things should reproduce the styles and data that are already present in your working version of SlashLinks. You'll have to remove the existing symbolic link before you put the new one in it's place with the following:

rm links (where links is the name of the symbolic link in your web directory not the SlashLinks program directory itself.

All you have to do now is create the symbolic link to the new install:

ln –s /full/path/to/slashlinks/public /full/path/to/www.example.com/links